Did you seriously ignore the well thought out post of someone who knows how these things work so that you could do some armchair economics 101 speculation about equilibrium pricing?
Here's the post again for you.
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Tim Sweeney: “If Valve commits to a permanent 88% revenue share, we’ll stop making new exclusive deals” (Read Staff Post)
- Thread starter Carlius
- Start date
Here's the post again for you.
I bet e.g. GoG is doing so much better now that Epic denies their exclusively bought titles to be sold there!
Despite all the articles with references to this over the years, I have yet to see an indie dev behind it that's actually put out a solid game recently that deserved more sales than it received.
Also, how does EGS solve this exactly? An indie dev creates a game, has a publisher, Epic reaches out to them or they reach out to Epic, they sign a deal, now the publisher potentially receives more money upfront. At what point does the indie dev get more money? When the lackluster platform scares away customers they would have had elsewhere?
Old definition. Digital monopolies control demand, not supply. See Facebook and Google, maybe Amazon down the line.
In practice Valve's cut isn't actually 30% across the board since they take 0% from Steam keys sold directly by devs/publishers and third party sellers like GMG and Humble. It's probably closer to 20%.
Did you know that you can buy Steam keys in many different places and those places have different prices from one another and compete with each other for sales?
It's almost as if Valve being the dominant launcher is only one part of the picture when it comes to discussing monopolies and competition, yet it seems to be the only part people focus on much of the time.
https://twitter.com/spiderwebsoft/status/901195552989171713
"All the profits" minus credit card transaction fees (which are going to be WAY higher for a small indie business than they are going to be for a massive corporation), you have to handle all the customer service (I love that our customers can get refunds on Steam and I don't have to personally handle each one), and there's the huge issue of no visibility. There have been indie success stories outside of Steam, but the idea that Valve is taking 30% of gross revenue and not providing anything in return is ridiculous.
I already noted in my post that I support Epic's policies because of the hypothetical change they could represent for the industry, not practical.
But your implication that Steam has done so much for these indie devs vocalizes a deeply toxic belief. The notion that because Steam was the platform that launched various indie hits (namely because it's damn hard to be an indie hit without being on Steam) - that these devs now owe Steam a sort of life debt. That to take an offer that better serves them would be amoral, and 'unfair'.
Meanwhile - Steam can open the floodgates of their storefront to shovelware, trading card schemes, toxic communities, and more - but of course that doesn't sully the deal.
Steam can do better. And if they don't, somebody else will. That's all this is.
Just because console manufacturers have trained you to believe this over the years it doesn't make it right.
Ok so what this boils down to is "competition is good"?
Is said competition still good when it reduces consumer choice and forces consumers to use products that lack features that are now considered to be standard?
Is said competition good when things like card processing fees are being passed on to the consumer?
Is said competition good when it means games are releasing without certain planned features enabled because the storefront is incapable of supporting them?
If all we care about is developer splits then all storefronts in existence need to be looked at, not just steam.
Ah, so we're just making up our own definitions for things while arguing in bad faith now.
He's just holding these games hostage to get greedy Valve to change their ways, guys. Don't you believe him?
He only says this because he knows 12% is barely sustainable for Epic Games Store let alone a platform that offers as much as Steam. He knows Valve can't afford to have that split across the board in all territories.
How fucking blatant can you be with taking people's complaints about your business practice and try to make it about your competitor. They need to get him off Twitter. It's one foot in mouth moment after another.
He only says this because he knows 12% is barely sustainable for Epic Games Store let alone a platform that offers as much as Steam. He knows Valve can't afford to have that split across the board in all territories.
How fucking blatant can you be with taking people's complaints about your business practice and try to make it about your competitor. They need to get him off Twitter. It's one foot in mouth moment after another.
So all the problems you think Steam has are fixed by an unsustainable and non-standard cut?
The dude's straight up ignoring any input he doesn't believe he can easily refute, I definitely don't think he's arguing in good faith.Ah, so we're just making up our own definitions for things while arguing in bad faith now.
Competition is only good if it spurs everyone to improve. Money hatting isn't going into the direction of that, and has in fact resulted in some negative consequences so far.
I'm sorry for previously wasting my time in responding to you.
These EGS threads are something else.
I'm not trying to come off as uninformed or blunt as a console gamer but like why are people so upset over this. Like all people have to do is just download the Epic store app. They are giving a bigger cut to devs and providing Valve with competition. This all just feels like early 2010s console wars to me.
My prediction is as they introduce new client features they will have devs opt in by giving up more of their cut. For example they can increase Epic's cut to, say, 15% to enable cloud saves for their game. That way they can continue to advertise a 12/88 baseline split for the absolute bare bones service tier.
What about the three console maker storefronts? Is it because they make the hardware that they get a free pass on the 30% cut?
i'm old enough to remember PC gaming before steam also.
indie devs actually needed publishers to get the games into the brick and mortar stores, so they actually didn't take all the profits.
you forget that if a dev wants to keep the profit for its game on steam, all he needs to do is sell the steam key through its own site. Valve gets 0% on keys that sell from other places, than their store
that seems like a smart move tbh. devs are paying for steamworks wether they use it or not, so a move like ths makes sense.
Moneyhatting exclusives is inherently anti-competitive.
Also while giving a bigger cut to devs is nice, the devs it helps the most (small, self publishing devs) are by and large not the ones they're moneyhatting. Giving the devs more of a cut sounds nice, but in actuality in most cases it'll be going to the publisher, and not the people actually working on the game
It's just not convenient to address for Tim and the EGS narrative. He needs his games on those platforms so the 30% is a-okay there. Again, Tim is anything but intellectually honest.
This hostage twitter post is a stunt in response to the Polygon article to go back to a narrative he likes more.
What is toxic about my statement? I can give you two examples of games released in last 20 days that were even released not to mention success tnx to Steam policy not to curate everything and their features like Steam Reviews. Those games are Supraland and Forager. Go and look how many outlets covered those games and then go and look how many reviews those games have on Steam. As I said before Valve can improve their cut I don't know how much they can lower it but for sure that is not 12% Tim is asking for. And Valve and Steam does improve and it improved over the years without "competition".
Guys, we just want to make everything better for everyone. Our end goal isn't trying to make money, overtake everyone else and become a monopoly, that's not it at all. We're not a business, we're your friend.
There's a line in "Uniform" by Bloc Party that goes, "Commerce dressed as rebellion," and goddamn, is it applicable here. Epic isn't any less scummy and exploitative than Steam because it passes its savings onto the publishers while the developers keep getting ground into dust nor is the cut justified to the consumers when they're offered an objectively bare-bones platform that didn't even have a search function or a shopping cart at launch.
Literally all of them? Has the "too many launchers" rhetoric already disappeared from public discourse?
To add on to this; his 2018 GDC talk also brings up Steam a couple of times. The whole thing is VERY WORTH a watch but the most relevant bit starts around 26:50.
It is def for the better. Valve playing Epic games (zing!) would be a bad mistake for them.
Because it's not exclusive to Steam? What do you think the actual standard is? "Steam" is shorthand for the rest of the market.
If you enjoy indie games, then you should probably know that Epic states that they have a more curated policy than Steam. Which means lesser chance of indie devs getting on to EGS. In addition, Epic isn't going to have forum, so if you want to find someone else to talk about the games, you are pretty much s.o.o.l because mainstream general places like reddit doesn't talk about niche indie games.
Ah, so we're just making up our own definitions for things while arguing in bad faith now.
Or maybe using a definition that leaves out monopolies like Google is wrong? Because they are already subject to anti-trust fines in Europe.
Epic ain't swinging for the distant second place. They're going for the king and they want that market share. Not gonna get that by threatening those peanut stalls.
Yeah, by actively hindering competition.
Valve has never, ever hindered competition with Steam. Devs and publishers are free to put the games elsewhere AND Steam, without repercussions from Valve.
If you want to provide examples of when Valve did anything similar to what Microsoft or Google has done to warrant anti-trust action?